


pomp and pain in the ass

by knightcap



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Everyone Is Alive, Graduation, Mental Health Issues, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 00:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11680419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightcap/pseuds/knightcap
Summary: Connor is just trying to get through the last couple weeks of high school without falling off the wagon, or jumping off and throwing himself in front. Graduation shouldn't come with so many hoops to jump through. Haven't there already been enough? The weird part is, he's not doing that bad.





	pomp and pain in the ass

 

 

Connor Murphy never thought he’d make it to graduation.

Not always in the sad way, the immediate way that jumped to people’s minds when he said it absentmindedly, too numb to care about the way their eyes gaped and mouths bulged (words, backwards, his head was still scrambled.) Part of it was just the regular way, the papers never handed in, the classes cut, the overwhelming inability to give a shit. Part of it was the sad way. The way he thought he’d be walking in September.

  
It was May, and it was unseasonably hot, and he has a piece of paper in front of him, asking him questions for the yearbook and measurements for his cap and gown.

 

**best memory from high schooL**

**song of the year**

**favorite teacher**

**plans for next year**

 

**measurements:**

**height**

**shoulder to shoulder**

**shirt collar**

 

He was less tired, sometimes, but today wasn’t one of those times. He starts with his height, because that one was the easiest. Did people have answers for the rest? Favorites and abstract inches, just ready to go? He didn’t want to know how long a string needed to be to fit around his throat. A rope. A shirt collar, he told himself, forcibly, and writes down **12,000 inches** because it made him feel better to give stupid answers that annoyed the asker. It was less gratifying when there was no immediate disapproving reaction.

 

**best memory from high school**

**song of the year**

**favorite teacher**

**plans for next year**

 

**measurements:**

**height** six feet under

 **shoulder to shoulder** not much

 **shirt collar** 12,000 inches

 

He doesn’t bother with the rest. He barely bothers to scrawl _CONNOR MURPHY_ at the top, pencil light and lazy, the normally bold letters downright lacy. But he bothers with his height, and that’ll have to be good enough.

Zoe, predictably, does not care that he lied on the slip, but is visibly jealous of his great privilege. Graduation - whoop de doo. Like it matters. Even though if he had filled out that survey in full, **plans for next year** would have been answered with a resounding **none.**  Not college, not work, not even the Army. Maybe **stare at the ceiling and rot**.

“CONNOR,” Zoe says, in the loud, tired, this-is-the-fifth-time-I’ve-tried way he hears so often, and he straightens his spine and turns his head in the passenger seat. She doesn’t bother to ask if he was listening, just turns on the radio and finds something loud, because ironically, it helps him focus on her talking, and it drowns out how weird their conversations still feel like two hands in one glove, itching for space, slowly adjusting to a forced closeness.

 

“I’ll probably work for NASA,” he says, figuring it covers his bases. That’s the only thing she could be asking, right?  
  
“I think you’ve got enough space in your head,” she says, and when Mr. Brightside comes on she turns it up.

 

-

 

Everyone, predictably, thinks it is a Big Deal. His parents get emotional when he tapes the senior schedule on the fridge, and so in childish payback he hides the cap and gown deep in his backpack when he gets them.

 

**i’m a little upset they didn’t actually make my collar 12,000 inches**

**that’d be like**

**really big**

 

It takes a minute, but Evan realizes what that means, and understands that’s probably not why Connor’s upset, and he responds, most importantly. With some math about how many Connors could lie around a thousand foot neckline, and then with some anecdote that barely connects, and then another.  Nothing is as good of a distraction as conversations are. There’s just something about- he doesn’t want to get into it now. He just wants to plunge himself into listening about Evan’s day and asking questions even though he doesn’t care that much and answering the ones asked of him.

 

_You okay?_

**never better**

 

They both know it isn’t true.

 

-

 

He can’t remember the dates for rehearsal, mostly because he can’t be assed to doublecheck. He knows there’ll be one indoors, and then there’s some breakfast on the morning of the outdoor second, some stupid thing where the town throws some scrambled eggs together and everyone cries over how it’s the last time they’ll all be together as a class, and reminisce about all the stupid shit they grew up doing. And then in about five hours they all come back and do it all again.

He hates scrambled eggs and he has about three friends that he’s known for all of six months, so he doesn’t worry about remembering when to show up for that one, either. But if Larry asks him if he’s sure about it one more time he’ll lose it.

He has to talk to them about that. The calendar is on the fridge. If anything, dear old Mom and Dad should be the one reminding him of the dates and getting mad and pointing at the obnoxiously coral sheet with all its happy little boxes.

Two rehearsals. Two rehearsals, and a breakfast, and a couple hours of sitting through speeches, and then it’s over.

He snaps at the hair elastic on his wrist and grits his teeth and doodles for hours in class. He can’t be bothered to give a fuck about finals, so he doesn’t study and aces the English and probably flunks all the rest, and tries not to think about how slowly the days are passing. Figures that right when he really wants it to slip through his fingers it turns to mud and sticks.

 

-

 

Connor has like, a thing about trying on this stupid gown. He isn’t as reclusive as he used to be; he sees the snaps and posts and pictures of everyone getting too excited over a baggy piece of itchy blue polyester. And the hats. There’s no point in decorating something nobody cares about besides him.

 

**it’s probably MORE original at this point to leave it blank. what about that.**

_That’s boring._

**I’m boring.**

_No you’re not. :T_

 

Evan’s going to do something that takes too long, and Alana’s going to do something elegant and funny, and Jared’s going to see how close he can get to inappropriate without getting his cap taken away altogether. Connor is just going to leave his blank.

Maybe he can get Zoe to do it for him.

 

-

 

This assembly room is a million fucking degrees and if he has to practice standing up and sitting down one more time he’s going to lose it, and that’s all he needs. He didn’t put M and K together until they were lining up and he realizes he’s next to Kleinman the whole time, and he _hates_ the anticipation of a couple hundred eyes on him as he crosses the stage, and he keeps kicking the back of Evan’s chair and making _him_ more anxious, too.

He has a therapy appointment in a half hour and if these goddamn idiots don’t figure it out and wrap it up he’s either going to use it as an excuse to skip or have to stand up and feel the eyes on his neck as he leaves without explaining, and he’s not sure which situation is worse.

He can hear Evan taking one of those long breaths he does and it gets under his skin, it’s too much, it’s all he can do to not take it out on something, anything, anyone else. He screws his eyes shut and pictures shoving Jared out of his chair, picking the metal foldout up, throwing it as hard as he could. It would be a good weight but not heavy enough, so he’d throw it harder and it would  crash into the concrete aisles, and it would make a resounding, satisfying crash.

It would soar over Evan’s head and the sound would make him flinch.

Ms. Jakes is definitely looking for an example to make of someone, and though Connor’s been complaining the whole time, this will get his walking privileges revoked.

It’s not going to make him feel better.

“Hey Connor,” Jared interrupts, too loud. “Stand up.”

The rehearsal ends in fifteen minutes and and he drives too fast with the music too loud afterward but he doesn’t crash and neither do any chairs.

Zoe is holding Connor’s graduation cap by the corners, staring at the royal blue like she’ll find the image waiting within, and Connor has laid his back on the bed, thrown his legs up against the wall, and let his head dangle off the edge. His hair almost touches the ground.

“How about a song,” she suggests, eyes never leaving the polyester. They’ve argued through pages of Pinterest, links sent to Connor at eleven at night when Zoe is pretending to still be studying, images from Evan of things that he associates with Connor in general, meaningful and meaningless quotes alike from Alana. Square one is a tightly sealed box.

“No,” he says, for the millionth time, and watches an upside down Zoe bow her forehead to touch the source of her stress.

“Come on, I don’t want apathy Connor. I want say yes to anything Connor. He comes with ideas.”

  
“He’s going through withdrawals,” he says, dry and simple, and despite herself Zoe laughs. Small, and uncomfortable, but a laugh. He wonders all of a sudden how long it was Zoe went without Connor’s stupid jokes making her laugh. Instead of chasing that, he tamps it down and thinks about what he wants. Easy, low effort, enough to get all his over-sentimental friends and family off his back. “Can’t you just throw some stars on it and call it a day?”

She perks up at this. The first serious and not-ban-worthy idea Connor has pitched, and even through the blood rushing to his head he can see her taking the inch a mile. “Like constellations?”

“Like your jeans,” he says, righting himself, and feeling that blood rush away again, making him dizzy. Great. Now he’s committed.

Zoe pushes and prods him into driving them to the craft store, where they pick a black ribbon dotted in the geometric five-pointers he’s picturing, and a couple of copper Sharpies to go with it; the ribbon becomes a border, and his sister fills the empty space with cartoony flowers.

The colors clash, and so do the patterns. The whole thing looks absolutely hideous, and if the lines weren’t so smooth it could pass for having been made in fifteen minutes, not forty.

He won’t say he loves it.

Zoe seems pretty damn smug anyways.

 

-

 

He gets up, smokes up, and gets himself together with fuzzy thoughts and slow fingers. He brushes his hair and buttons up his shirt and drives old-lady careful to the breakfast, because much as sitting in that cafeteria for the first time in months makes him itch, waiting around at home feels worse, and the french toast sticks seem pretty tempting, and the haze makes the thing bearable. He drives home and falls asleep before it wears off, and when he wakes up he realizes he’s slept wrinkles into the shirt and sweat like a lake’s worth.

 He throws on some deodorant and dry shampoo and calls it a day, and when he comes down the stairs tugging at the robe sleeves Cynthia yelps and starts to bawl and insists on a picture, then another, and another, until they’re almost late rushing into the car and dropping Connor at the gym and pulling away to park and get the good seats if they can.

 The gym is packed. Graduation feels just like the rest of high school, for a minute, Connor sticking out like a sore thumb as he watches the crowds move and mingle, and then through one blue robe and another he spots Heidi.

 Right at the end there school sucked a bit less. He ducks around overexcited girls and teary-eyed boys until he’s dwarfing the Hansens, both of whom turn to him with vivid expressions: Heidi looks delighted, and Evan downright relieved. “There you are!” She’s grinning. Evan gives Connor a look, and something in his gut drops and understands right as she continues, “Now, we just need the other two-” and good luck with that, Alana’s valedictorian and Bigfoot is more photogenic than Jared is. But Connor stays, exchanging looks with Evan as his mom leads them around the big bright room. The noise is more noticeable the longer they walk, and Evan’s hand slips into his own somewhere along the line.

They take the pictures in front of the bleachers, smiles at varying levels of strain before Heidi is satisfied to let them collapse and wait for it to be time to line up.

Connor tells Evan he’s not going to trip. Evan still looks queasy, but he rolls his eyes.

Ms. Jakes says something indistinguishable, but it doesn’t matter, because the shouts and woops that roll over the room are self-explanatory. Alana perks up and practically Apparates to her place as line-leader, and Connor bites his lip instead of kissing Evan on the forehead. He settles for nudging his knee before getting up and standing between Mormile and Kleinman, squaring his shoulders and feeling a weird sort of present in the moment.

It was supposed to storm, and the clouds are there, sure enough, but only serve to make the sky more beautiful. Pinks and reds and yellow light, falling on them all as Alana talks about friendship, as the principal talks about hard work, as applause fills the football field and Connor sits, feeling nothing.

Evan’s bouncing his leg like he’s trying to drill through the turf, and doesn’t stop until his name is called. Full, middles and all. It feels a little too intimate every time.

But he stands, and crosses the stage with a straight back, glances to the audience only once before crossing behind it, back to his seat, and exhaling all the nervous energy he’s been keeping all day.

“Nice one,” Connor says, as Evan slumps down over his diploma and laughs, a little hysterical.

“Thanks,” Evan says to his knees, and straightens up by the time Isabella Hernandez needs him to move and let her sit beside him.

Evan breathes his anxiety out, and all of a sudden Connor takes it in. It’s unexpected, but loud- what if he just walked away right now? He could. It strikes him, not for the first time, how much he could… anything.

A hand is offered, reaching back at an awkward angle. Connor takes it, and keeps his eyes on fake grass until he hears his name.

This is the most people that have looked at him at once, maybe ever. People who hate him. People who know nothing about him. The principal hands him a diploma, and the handshake lingers a second. Connor is on first name basis with Brian by now. He can’t tell if the guy is looking at him with disgust or pride. Maybe a little of both.

Connor returns to his row, and sits back down, and he’s as surprised as anyone else when he realizes he’s got a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes.

Jared dabs as he crosses the stage, and the audience titters. Connor laughs and lets a few drops roll down his cheeks.

Fuck, he really did it, huh?

This piece of paper is meaningless. But for the next twenty minutes, he’s staring at it with more than a little disbelief. It’s enough of a high to hurl his cap as high as he can at the end, get through hugs from the girls, and take a picture with each member of his family, blood and found alike.

The found is where he ends the night, though. He goes home with his parents and changes back into soft pants and a pajama shirt, and Evan picks him up for a late night field run. They’ve been here in a million different moods, but tonight it feels a little bigger. The stars are bright and burning. So is Connor.

 

-

 

And then nothing happens at all.

He sleeps in till eleven the next day, which is kind of weird, because it’s a Tuesday. But not that weird. He stares at a glass of orange juice and thinks about nothing, until he’s interrupted with a hearty, “There he is!”

He downs the juice in two sips and goes back to his room.

After about two weeks of floating like this, an envelope arrives in the mail addressed to the parents of Connor Murphy, with the district logo printed in blue on the upper left corner. As he has for years when one such letter arrives, Connor opens it as he crosses the street back to the house.

His final grades. His GPA. None of it matters anymore.

The first time Larry slid the Classified section of the paper across the table to him, hinting, Connor looked him in the eye and dumped what was left of his drink on it. Like hell was he going to stick himself in a Burger King drive-through to appease someone he hated.  
  
But he also sort of hates the idea of customer service in general.

And being stuck here, bored out of his mind, filling time with headphones and his eyes firmly on the ceiling once more. Evan’s working an internship in the summer, and looking for work to fill a gap year. Alana and Jared are leaving. Zoe’s stuck one more year in hell school.

Connor opens the newspaper, and a bag of chips. It could be somewhere to start.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> so i graduated recently, and unsurprisingly felt a LOT, and over the course of the past month, turned it into uhhh Whatever This Is?  
> ty for reading it, comments/kudos are always appreciated!


End file.
